Jimmy Huh shares his secrets to effective Search Engine Opt…

Jimmy Hue. Photo: Supplied

Jimmy Huh is an SEO consultant in the US who has had many years of experience with digital marketing. He works with small to medium sized businesses, with a focus on providing personalised services to his clients. He also provides a significant amount of help to start-ups.

Jimmy Huh the SEO expert from Los Angeles has worked with a lot of clients in his time, many of them on an ongoing basis. This tells you one thing: he is very good at what he does. Here Jimmy shares some of the secrets that make his SEO campaigns so effective.

Jimmy, what is your background in digital marketing? What motivated you to become a digital marketing consultant?

I’ve been in digital marketing ever since college back in 2010/2011. My friend started one of the first restaurant discount texting services and we partnered with a bunch of restaurants on campus and marketed it to students with social media, email and ads.

From there I started my own businesses but they were always idea or product oriented and struggled to find good partners for lead generation. A lot of Search Engine Marketing people were either too expensive at an agency level or were located abroad. This motivated me to find partners or provide solutions that were more turnkey and affordable.

Overtime, the specific niche of SEM I specialize in now is SEO. The other aspects, whether it is PPC, content or email, I now outsource to strategic partners that highly specialize in those fields. It makes the work fun and one of growth.

For clients, they get an individual or a small sized business that offers a lot of personal touch and interaction. I think it’s important for a single proprietor or a small to medium sized business to get that.

How people can get their website on the top of Google search results?

I’d suggest working with an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Consultant or agency first. The industry has too many nuances for someone to do it solely on their own. A big reason for this is you may make changes or updates that can have a negative impact on your business rather than forward it.

Outside of that general disclaimer, it’s really important to be targeting something highly specific per page. One keyword per page is the mantra.

Part of the process will then be choosing the specific target per page and asking what are people searching for. You can scour the internet for tips on how to find those keywords and then how to place them on your page so Google knows what it is about. My suggestion would be to take a look at your competitors for a keyword currently on page 1; their usage, content strategy and focus will be very telling.

After that you’ll need to acquire some backlinks and send some PPC traffic – that takes good actions and your ranking process has started.

How you do you drive traffic to websites? Is there a special way to do it?

Initially, always do PPC. Work with someone who is seasoned in Adwords and/or FB ads. Depending on the niche, product or space, one may be stronger or more relevant or both may be worth running at the same time.

The idea is PPC traffic is supposed to:

Help send traffic and business to your site now

Give insight on how well your funnel or conversion is set up for a page

Send positive signals to Google about your page

Be eventually replaced somewhat by SEO

Once this is all happening, your rankings will begin to improve. The goal is to have your organic traffic begin to replace some or all of your PPC traffic but I generally recommend running both at once to cover all your bases and not miss out on traffic opportunities.

Are there any channels other than SEO that we should consider when we want to do some digital marketing?

Yes as noted earlier, PPC is a big one. Whether it is Adwords, FB ads, directory rankings, you will want exposure to your target audience and a quick way to funnel traffic to your site.

Depending on the page or product though, you can explore different methods to send traffic.

One such way is YouTube. Because of mobile phone usage and consumption behaviour, we’re seeing YouTube become the 2nd most used search engine behind Google. These have their own keyword tools but basic ideas like entering your general keyword will show what related keywords people are searching.

Having your content on Youtube be strong and informative, while using best SEO practices and even sending some paid traffic there while utilizing a description box to reroute or have traffic convert is a strong play.

What are the most recent trends in SEO?

Video and content is showing up newly. You’ll notice now that the video 3 pack or article 3 pack is now firing for certain searches.

The video 3 pack is the newest addition and it speaks volumes to how people are searching, what type of content they are looking for and how they are looking to consume the content.

Why is this significant? Youtube is relatively open compared to Google. You can rank for super competitive keywords much easier on YouTube than on Google because the content barrier to entry is much higher.

Not as many people are willing to create top quality content for video even though video is a massive consumption tool people are doing. With the right keyword usage, tag addition and having a video that is longer (about 7-10 minutes), you can have a video rank fairly quickly.

Other trends to look out for and try to utilize is the featured table or paragraph (we call them ranking 0) and image SEO.

How are you planning on expanding your business in the future?

I am in a few SEO mastermind groups so I’m constantly hearing the new updates or strategies that are occurring. Part of the idea is to target or create niches I am really interested in.

Other things I am looking at are businesses I can begin to enter or partner with as a marketing or SEO manager. I have many partnerships with businesses to do their SEO as an equity partner which allows me larger returns.

Lastly, I am growing my own website. I get a lot of leads coming in for people looking for exactly what I spoke about earlier – smaller, more boutique help that is personalized and especially local. Being a Los Angeles native and now a resident again, people have easy access to speak to me and know whom they will be working with.

The best sign I guess is not only the amount of business but also the reoccurring business I have or return customers I get. Also the referral numbers are growing each month!